


The Perfect Snowflake

by Desert Dragonfly (bookbeachbunny)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 15:11:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookbeachbunny/pseuds/Desert%20Dragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya is missing during a major storm leaving Catelyn to worry and wonder where her youngest daughter has gotten to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Perfect Snowflake

Catelyn was beside herself. She didn’t think she could pace this floor or worry for one minute, one second longer even as she was turning again. Winterfell had been searched from top to bottom and now the others were out in the storm. She didn’t want to think about it. Robb and Jon had been questioned but for once in their lives they seemingly had no idea where their youngest sister was.  
The Septa had reported nothing from the morning. No fights. No arguments. Arya had been a perfect pupil.  
In fact she had been on her very best behavior for the last several days. Catelyn had attributed it to Ned being gone but she cursed herself now because that was never the case. “Where is she? Where is she?”  
Baby Rickon just looked at her like she had lost her mind. Catelyn walked over to the window and opened the shutter immediately regretting it. The storm had been upon them for the last two days and only seemed to grow worse. The cold hit her hard. But she would have forced herself to stand it if not for the baby’s sake.  
Arya was a smart girl and she knew her home. She knew this weather. She wouldn’t have gone out in it willingly.  
“Mother?”  
“Sansa! Any word?”  
“No.”  
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive that you didn’t notice anything strange this afternoon?”  
“Arya’s always strange!”  
“Sansa!”  
“Well, she is!”  
Catelyn sighed. She had no time for this when she was mentally kicking herself for whatever mistake she had made. With Ned gone to the Umber’s she had been so busy but she was sure she recognized every face within the castle and they had no one in the cells. This kind of weather there wouldn’t be strangers and foolish travelers wouldn’t make it far.  
“She was upset though. I didn’t remember because it was a yesterday! You didn’t say anything about yesterday!” Sansa was babbling again and Catelyn tried to control herself.  
“What?”  
“She’s always getting me into trouble!”  
“Sansa! Please, just tell me…”  
“I know. Everyone went right to blaming me!”  
“No one is blaming you!” Catelyn had to struggle to control her temper though Sansa was already crying. She braced herself for whatever was coming. “Please, just tell me what you remembered.”  
“She was upset about you.”  
“Me?”  
Oh by the Mother, she tried to think of everything she had said to Arya the last couple of days. Had she been critical? Had she been cruel? She never meant it but sometimes the child tried her patience.  
But she really couldn’t remember anything. She had dined with the children in the morning, sent them off to their lessons, took the evening meal with them and put them to bed. Arya hadn’t seemed to least bit off.  
“She said she heard you crying.”  
“What?”  
“Twice… She said you didn’t know but when she went to the father’s solar that you were upset and telling Maester Luwin that you felt lost here that you missed your family and felt like you didn’t…” the words were tumbling out of Sansa’s mouth again.  
“Sansa…”  
“I didn’t believe her! Then she said you were crying in your room last night as well. Are you upset mother?”  
“What? No!”  
“Are you going to leave us?”  
“Sansa! Never!”  
She hugged the child tightly to her. She would never ever willingly leave her children but she didn’t want her daughter to know that she had been upset. A raven had come that she had hoped was from her husband. She had cried when she realized that it was simply from Riverrun and then cried again because she missed both her husband and her home.  
“Can you think of anything else my love?” she tried to be as soothing as possible but she was already tired of the crying when Arya could be in trouble.

But it was Catelyn that thought of it first. She remembered several weeks before even before Ned had left when the younger children had demanded a story and Arya had looked up at her and asked with a cold little voice, “Don’t you know any Northern stories?”  
It had hurt even as she told herself the child couldn’t possibly realize that, “Why yes,” she smiled. “I’ll tell you a story of the first Northern Princess and how she quested for and found the perfect snowflake.”  
She made it up as she went along. Catelyn did not have Old Nan’s way with story-telling. But she enjoyed it and especially the fact that Arya, though she had seemed disbelieving at first, had been hanging on her every word by the end of the first night. “There was no Winterfell at the time.  
The North was an old and frightening place but Lyarra listened to the wind and heard the song of Snow…  
It was a hard life for the child and though her father was very important she was always cold and she missed the bright colors and the sun. She sometimes thought that if she just kept walking far enough she could get out of the endless white.  
Then one day her mother became very ill. They didn’t know what was wrong with her but they tried everything that they could. Still, she got sicker and sicker…”  
Catelyn gasped. She had told her children that the wind had sung to Lyarra that if only she could find the one single perfect snowflake of the North she could keep her mother with her forever and ever.

“This is all my fault,” she told Luwin.  
“I wish you would come inside.”  
“No. As long as Arya’s out in the cold then I’m going to stand out here as well.”  
“Lady Stark.”  
“I did this.”  
“You did not.”  
Catelyn shook her head. She liked the Maester well enough but sometimes his infernal calmness made her want to scream. “How much time has passed?”  
“I’m unsure.”  
“That means you don’t want to say.”  
It felt like forever.  
The snow was only beginning to let up when darkness fell. Catelyn would have stood out in the cold forever. She tried to think of the silly story but she had made the whole thing up off the top of her head because Arya had upset her. She paced the walls in the snow now instead of her room.  
It seemed like she had been pacing all day.  
Only when she heard the horses did she even bother to look up and stop mentally berating herself.  
“We’ve found her!”  
“Arya!”  
The child looked a little worse for the wear as she shivered in furs one of the riders had given her. Catelyn didn’t even wait for the horses to stop before she was pulling her off the back of her mount.  
“I’m sorry!”  
“Arya! What where you thinking?”  
“Well, not that I would get lost!” The child looked so put out at that her mother almost but not quite laughed. She pulled her daughter into the warmth of the halls the men following after them. Luwin was giving orders to get her dry clothes and let her siblings know that she was okay. Catelyn ignored everything but her shivering daughter trying to hold her close enough to warm while still checking her over for any wounds.  
“I found it mother. I found it and then I lost it and then the girl came! Just like the story!”  
“Arya, what in the world?”  
“I saw the Lady of the River! Just like you said…” Catelyn looked closely at her daughter but Arya did not seem to be making any of this up. “She was all bathed in the light and she told me she had come to find me.” Catelyn reached out to see if she was feverish but Arya pulled away. “She told me I had to go back but I had lost it!”  
“Lost what?”  
“The perfect snowflake. It was supposed to keep you here!”  
“Oh, Arya. That was only a story…”  
“You said you missed your home! So I wanted to find the snowflake for you and I did! I swear it…”  
“Arya,” Cat caught the girl’s face in her hands and that at last seemed to calm her down. She didn’t quite know what to say. Actually, no she wanted to yell at her for putting herself in danger and causing her family so much worry but there would be time for that when she knew this little adventure hadn’t made Arya ill.  
“I was upset yes. But it wasn’t what you think. I love you and your brothers and sisters and I will never leave.”  
“You promise?”  
“I promise.”  
Arya threw her arms around her mother who happily hugged her back for everything it was worth. It felt like warmth was coming back to the girl and Cat could hear the other’s come running. “I did see her,” Arya whispered. “The Lady…”  
“I believe you.”  
“She told me to come home and tell you that she missed you very much…”  
Cat’s heart skipped a beat even as Arya was out of her arms running toward her siblings. She didn’t even care that the first person she hugged was the bastard. She hadn’t told Arya this but when she was making up the Lady of the River, she had based her on her own much missed mother.  
For a split second more she let herself wonder if Arya hadn’t dreamed it up. She felt her mother’s presence more so than she had in years and then Catelyn let the feeling slip away, wiped the tears from her cheeks and went off to join the others. “Come, come. We have to get Arya into warm clothes and all of you have been awake far too long this night!”


End file.
